Abolition of Man? How Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science

Location: The Heritage Foundation's Allison Auditorium

At the dawn of the last century, leading scientists and
politicians giddily predicted that science would supply solutions
to all the intractable problems of American society, from crime to
poverty to education. Instead, politics and culture came to
be dehumanized as scientific experts began treating human action as
little more than behavior to be studied and improved. How did
American public policy become corrupted by scientific
materialism? What are the consequences for society when
scientists and politicians deny the essential differences between
human beings and the rest of nature? What results ensue when
experts claiming to speak for science turn out to be wrong?
How can we restore democratic accountability in an age of
experts?

Author of Darwin Day in America: How Our Politics and
Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science, John G.
West is a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute and Associate
Director of the Institute's Center for Science and Culture.
An Associate Professor of Political Science at Seattle Pacific
University, West is the author or editor of several books,
including The Politics of Revelation and Reason: Religion and
Civic Life in the New Nation and The Encyclopedia of
Religion in American Politics.

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